4 LIFE AND HABIT, 



So complete would the player's unconsciousness 

 of the attention he is giving, and the brain power he is 

 exerting appear to be, that we shall find it difficult to 

 awaken his attention to any particular part of his 

 performance without putting him out. Indeed we 

 cannot do so. We shall observe that he finds it hardly 

 less difficult to compass a voluntary consciousness 

 of what he has once learnt so thoroughly that it 

 has passed, so to speak, into the domain of uncon- 

 sciousness, than he found it to learn the note or 

 passage in the first instance. The effort after a 

 second consciousness of detail baffles him compels 

 him to turn to his music or play slowly. In fact it 

 seems as though he knew the piece too well to be able 

 to know that he knows it, and is only conscious of 

 knowing those passages which he does not know 

 so thoroughly. 



At the end of his performance, his memory would 

 appear to be no less annihilated than was his con- 

 sciousness of attention and volition. For of the thou- 

 sands of acts requiring the exercise of both the one 

 and the other, which he has done during the five 

 minutes, we will say, of his performance, he will 

 remember hardly one when it is over. If he calls to 

 mind anything beyond the main fact that he has 

 played such and such a piece, it will probably be 

 some passage which he has found more difficult than 

 the others, and with the like of which he has not been 

 so long familiar. All the rest he will forget as com- 

 pletely as the breath which he has drawn while 

 playing. 



